I lower my gaze to the blood dripping from his clawed hand, not concealed by the fog of darkness. Crimson dollops splash onto the bed, staining the silk.
“Are you wounded?”
There’s a slight pause. “No. Another slipped into the vent after me.”
“And…you killed them?”
“Yes. Problem?”
His words sound matter-of-fact. Stubborn. Or…is it curiosity? It is hard to tell what this nightwalker is thinking.
Is he friend or foe?
The darkness moves to the wall near the bed. My eyes widen a fraction when he presses his hand to it, and a yellow-lit room appears.
I rise from the chair and peek over his shoulder to see it’s a bathroom. All this time, there was a bathroomright there. I could have washed instead of parading around in bloody clothes!
“Why didn’t you tell me there was a bathroom?” I say, stepping closer but still keeping my distance.
“You were drunk on venom.” The shadows swirl around a washcloth, plucking it from the rack. “The last thing I wanted to do was tell you about it, and for you—in your drunken state—to undress, only to regret it later.”
Pressing my lips inwards with a small grunt of ascent, my gaze settles on the blood circling the drain of the washbasin.Leave him be. Leave him be. Leave him be.The chant repeats in my head, trying to convince me to stay put, but instinct pulls me towards him as he washes his clawed hand under the running water.
I enter the bathroom, a wash of yellow light caressing my body, and I stand beside the nightwalker. “Let me.”
The shadows clinging to the nightwalker quiver, alive with emotion, and a guarded look crosses his red eyes when he looks at me, then away. I take the washcloth from him and soak it in the basin.
He is quiet, but tingles erupt across my neck as he watches me critically. Squeezing the excess water from the washcloth, I face the darkness. A shallow breath escapes me as I take in how tall he is. I’m the same height as Jax—making me the tallest woman in my group—but in front of this nightwalker, I feel incredibly small.
“Hand,” I say breathlessly.
The nightwalker chuckles darkly as he raises his bloody, clawed hand. “Afraid, kamai?”
“Of you?” I smile, but it falls quickly when I touch his bloodstained knuckles. “I’m not sure.”
I don’t know what I’m doing. Not sure why I am here, in this too-small bathroom with a nightwalker. Still, I’m reminded of all the injuries Cole sustained as a child and the many times I washed the cuts on his knees and hands. Or the times Emily injured herself climbing the tree in the courtyard, and I was there with a cold rag, pressing it against her swelling ankle.
Even knowing he isn’t injured and the blood covering him is not his, I want to help.
“You’re very…motherly,” he says.
I draw the wet rag across his pointed claws until they shimmer black and no longer run red under the faucet. “I often hear that from my friends.” When I look up, there is a softness in the deep red eyes watching me. My fingers run up the back of his hand, and I hold him tenderly while I am stolen away in those eyes. “Do you have a lover?”
His eyes widen at the question, and so do mine.
I clear my throat, releasing my grip on him, and I turn away to wash the towel in the basin. A flush of bloodrushes from the towel with every squeeze, and I keep my focus on what I am doing while I internally scream over what I just said.
“I mean someone to tend to your wounds,” I say in a thin attempt to revise my words. “Do you have someone who cares for you?” I rinse and wring out the towel again, leaving it clean and damp. “You told me nightwalkers don’t fool around, so…”
I’m lying. Lying through my damn teeth because of the word-vomit.
“No,” he answers, and I hear the confusion in his voice. “I don’t.”
I nod. “Right. You hadn’t kissed anyone before me, so that makes sense. If you had a lover, you would have kissed them by now.”
“I suppose…”
There’s a weird, static air between us, and I am the cause. I shouldn’t have entered the bathroom. Shouldn’t be here, tending to a nightwalker who isn’t even wounded.
